Thought I might write a brief update on my progress with my degree. This semestre I'm currently enrolled in Decision Theory, Empirical Economic Research and Managerial Decision Making. I wanted to do Risk Management instead of Managerial, but it was not possible due to my time schedule. It's a shame, because it would have been interesting, on the other hand it would have been a lot of work for me aswell.
I've decided what I'm gonna write about for my bachelor thesis. I originally wanted to write about Rogue Traders in either Risk Management or Decision Theory, but that didn't work out. Now I'm writing about the effects of natural catastrophes on macroeconomic indicators in Empirical Research. I haven't really done much for it yet, just figured out the topic a few days ago and looked for some basic data. I should start to do some more serious work come tomorrow.
Poker has been more fun lately. After a very frustrating February I took it easy in March, just playing when I felt like I wanted to play. I've dropped my HUD stats for now and am just playing with the active players window so I can check on unknowns preflop tendencies in certain spots or stats from other players as I feel necessary. I can do this quite comfortably as I am only six tabling. I know common consensus says one should be using a HUD. In fact Jungleman says not using a HUD is a leak and he doesn't think he can be beaten without one. I really feel very comfortable without one though. I know I used to be a little paranoid that I would go on a massive downswing the first time I turned it off, but that didn't happen and I did pretty well without one. On the other extreme there are players like Samo and Benefield that don't use HUDs (Benefield might be using a HUD now it's just what I remember him saying back when he was a more active player) and also don't think it's good to use one. I guess everyone needs to figure out what works best for themselves. I like to mix things up.
I'm currently on the fifth season of The Wire, so things are coming to an end slowly. It has been an interesting watch so far and there is a lot of character diversity. This never seems to get old:
Not sure if I can help at all, but I'm a catastrophe analyst for a Bermuda reinsurer. Right now I analyze crop and terrorism portfolios, but I have experience in pretty much everything (earthquake, windstorm, tornado/hail, flood).
Shoot me a pm if you've got any questions. Can't promise you answers for everything but I'll do my best.
It's a bit detailed, but I'll try to make it as easy as possible. For the US, we use a scientific model that was created by a modeling firm. Essentially what it does is picks targets in the US - major landmarks, corporate headquarters, government buildings, sporting arenas, etc. - and uses hypothetical scenarios based on attacks on those targets. The attacks range from 500 pound bombs to nuclear/radioactive/chemical weapons. It analyzes the locations in the portfolio against these events, and predicts loss from different attack types.
Worldwide, there isn't a model up to this point, so it's digging into the portfolios and determining WHERE the risk is and HOW MUCH risk there is. In some cases, the data is basically unusable, and it's really a bit of a crapshoot. In many instances, we get terrorism pools for different countries which would be akin to taking a slice of the US TRIA backstop. Other policies have accounts in them that would be worldwide account - as an example, all the Hilton hotels in the world. You have no clue where they are, just that you're covering XXX billion worldwide. Also, most of the policies cover such things a civil riots and commotion, war on land, etc. so determining where the locations are can be vital at times of conflict.
One example - when the riots in Egypt first started we had to determine what, if any, exposure we had at risk. We went through all of our terror exposure, and determined there were 3 hotels in Cairo, and we were able to determine where all of them were. 2 were a safe distance from the demonstration, and 1 was basically right next to the action. We tuned into the BBC live broadcast to get a feel for where the riots were in relation to the hotel, and it turned out the feed we were watching from, was actually from within the exact hotel. So we basically knew that as long as the crowd didn't come toward the camera, we were pretty safe.
